The present invention relates to irrigation equipment, and more particularly, to rotor-type sprinklers that spray water over an adjustable arc.
Rotor-type sprinklers are widely used for watering lawns, golf courses, athletic fields and other landscaping. Typically such a sprinkler includes a cylindrical outer housing with a central riser that extends upwardly when the water is turned ON and retracts when the water is turned OFF. A head at the upper end of the riser includes a nozzle that directs a stream of water over the adjacent area. The head is rotated about a vertical axis by an internal turbine and gear drive through an predetermined arc whose ends limits are usually manually adjustable with a special tool. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,107,056 granted Oct. 15, 1963 to Edwin J. Hunter and U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,024 granted Feb. 4, 1986 to Edwin J. Hunter.
Adjustable arc pop-up sprinklers typically have a reversing mechanism associated with the gear drive for the head. The direction of the water stream from the nozzle thus oscillates between pre-set end limits. These ends limits are usually trip points. For the sake of simplicity usually one end limit is fixed and the other end limit is moved along a circumferential ring or bull gear. Thus sector areas for watering can be pre-programmed such as forty-five degrees, seventy degrees, one hundred and eighty degrees, two hundred and seventy degrees, etc.
Conventional arc adjustable rotary sprinklers are usually provided with a circular opening in the top surface thereof which receives the shaft of an arc adjustment tool which is manually inserted and twisted by the sprinkler installer or landscape maintenance worker to adjust the arc of the sprinkler. The receptacle into which the tool is inserted normally has a spring to force the tool back upward when the adjustment is complete. This requires the tool to be manually held down in order to adjust the arc. It is cumbersome and tedious to both hold down the tool and twist the same to set the arc of the sprinkler.